What happened to Topozone?

[brad81286]

What in the heck has happened with Topozone? They have been acquired by Trails.com and it now appears that you have to pay in order to get their maps. Does anyone know of a way to get them anywhere else?

[thellamaman]

This really is too bad.. TopoZone was the first place to get nationwide free topo maps, and they've been going for over 8 years now! And then suddenly last week, the site was redirected to Trails.com, and the free topo maps are gone.

I work for a company called MyTopo.com, and we've decided to put our maps on-line free. You can browse them, print them, and share map links with other people. It should be very similar to what TopoZone had. Here is the site:

http://www.mytopo.com/maps.cfm

There are other free topo sites that use data from Terraserver, but our maps have shaded relief and are (in many areas) more up to date.

We're still kind of in Beta, but let me know if you have any suggestions. Thanks.

- Doug

[batrotter]

I work for a company called MyTopo.com, and we've decided to put our maps on-line free. You can browse them, print them, and share map links with other people. It should be very similar to what TopoZone had.

My first suggestion for your company is to offer UTM coordinates and to offer different map datums. I would also like to see a pointer as to where the coordinate is at.

Thanks to your company for offering the maps!

[joestewart]

Thank you for http://www.mytopo.com.

Another one to try: http://www.backcountrymaps.com/

If you just need to download the USGS DRG maps they can be downloaded via the Libre Map Project now on Archive.org:

http://www.archive.org/details/maps_usgs

Easier for me to navigate this way though:

http://libremap.org/data/

Joe

[tncaver]

I noticed the same thing the other day when I tried topozone. Trails.com has taken over and wants money to view
the maps now. So I searched and also found Libre maps. Like Joe Stewart said the easiest link to use is http://libremap.org/data/. This gives you access to all states and will allow you to download individual maps,
but you will need a high speed internet connection to download them. The maps range in size from 4mb to around 9 mb.
I click on the Tiff version to download and open the maps. On my computer the Tiff version is opened by Microsoft
Office Image software which allows a person to scroll around and enlarge or reduce size. You can print the map off too
but when I did, I got the whole map at 8.5 X 11 inches which was useless. Don't know if there is a way to print off
sections of the map or not. Photoshop might open it. I haven't tried that yet. There are also two other formats that can be downloaded but my machine would only work with the Tiff version which is some kind of DRG image.

I'll have to try out http://www.mytopo.com/maps.cfm. Maybe it will be more useful.

[NZcaver]

A pity about Topozone. If you have to pay to view their maps in any practical form, it's no longer a useful site for me.

The mytopo site looks nice - thanks for posting the link. I agree with the earlier comments about UTM and different datums would be nice, but since it's still a Beta version - not bad!

I briefly checked out libremap.org and backcountrymaps.com. Personally, I found both sites horrible to navigate. I like to navigate "Google Earth style" and search and zoom in on whatever interests me. Picking through lists of locations and features to find the map I need is not my idea of fun. Both these sites also seem to be missing entire states worth of data and maps. And backcountrymaps.org has some advisory about their site being optimized for use with some non-standard browser, which seems like a pointless concept to me.

Hopefully over time the standards and options for viewing free online topo maps will continue to improve.

[brad81286]

I haven't checked all of these sites yet, but I really liked being able to type in coordinates in different forms and getting the pinpoint location.

[David_Weaver]

The USGS has their own web application - The National Map. http://nmviewogc.cr.usgs.gov/viewer.htm

Performance is pretty poor unless you turn off all the layers. But it does provide excellent detail in multiple layers.

David

[RobVan]

The MyTopo.com site looks really promising - thanks Doug!

Here's a link to TerraServer which has always been my alternative or backup to TopoZone:

http://terraserver-usa.com/advfind.aspx?panel=DMS

Note that you can easily switch from D/M/S to decimal degrees, place names, or street addresses.

Robert
Nashville Grotto

[Cheryl Jones]

NASA World Wind has good topo option. http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/

[Scott McCrea]

http://mapper.acme.com/ integrates topos into the Google Maps format, similarly to mytopo, but it's full screen.

[barcelonacvr]

This site may be of use as well ?

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/topo/250k/index.html

[cavemanjonny]

USAPhotomaps is a very handy piece of software if you run Windows. It downloads data from Terraserver and stitches it together for you. You can download sat photos, topos, and in some areas a few other tidbits. It supports UTM and lat/lon.

http://jdmcox.com/

[barcelonacvr]

This might be handy for those in the covered areas,I hope this expands!

http://www.3dgeomaps.com/

[wyandottecaver]

has anyone tried the free trial or paid the subscription for trails.com? just wondering about their topomap features.